1-4 This is really interesting data and worth a breakdown. This is all fatal injuries by month in the US. I've split it into pre-covid and pandemic. I included provisional data, but it only looks like it's going down because that data is incomplete.
2- Look at the big jump once COVID came into play. That in itself is alarming.
3- The trend lines also paint a worrisome picture. The rates of these types of death is increasing at a faster rate after the pandemic started than before.
4-4 This all suggests that COVID is leading to more accidental injuries, likely due to increases in brain fog and risk-taking behavior.
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Since hantavirus is trending because of the death of Gene Hackman's wife, I thought I would share some of the bigger picture I wrote on ProMED about 15-20 years ago, tying in West Nile virus (WNV) and climate change.
2- One major route of hantavirus infection is through breathing in the urine and feces of rodents, particularly deer mice. This is a problem particularly in the western US, especially when people clean cabins in the spring.
3- During El Niño, more rain comes to the Four Corners region of the US. This drives two things:
1) The extra rain drives more wild grass/grain production, providing more food for rodents, leading to a rodent bloom.
1-3 Someone sent me a study after my piece about MVAs and COVID. It's stunning.
"Findings indicate an association between acute COVID-19 rates and increased car crashes with an OR of 1.5 (1.23-1.26 95%CI)...
2- The OR of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder...
3-3 The study suggests that acute COVID-19, regardless of Long COVID status, is linked to an increased risk of car crashes presumably due to neurologic changes caused by SARS-CoV-2."
1-9 The resistance to evidence about COVID and Trump has puzzled me until now.
KGB agent Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov defected to Canada in 1970 and stated 85% of KGB work was “a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.”
2-“What it...means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”
3-"Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve...the time it takes to change what the people are thinking".
Let's start with a couple of my pandemic slides from 20 years ago. In this one, I was talking about how SE Asia has the densest human, waterfowl, and pig populations anywhere on Earth.
2- The importance of that is a little bit more subtle. Typically, human and avian influenza viruses don't cross between those species. That has a little bit to do with receptors and body temperatures, among other things.
3- The bad thing is that influenza is a very promiscuous virus. It's more than happy to swap some genes or even mop up genetic material from the environment and incorporate it into its genome.